Tag Archives: hardware

I earned a couple C-notes a week or so back when my brother and I remodeled my niece’s bathroom. I’ve had the cash stashed away for a rainy day. I know it’s not raining. However, I really would like to have my video issue resolved. I have a really nice vid card (EVGA GeForce GTS-450) that I can’t even use with my current system because of issues with the PCIe 16 socket/circuitry. You can read more about that HERE and HERE.

Well, here’s what I did…

I was just for fun snooping around on CompUSA’s website (mistake #1), when I ran across THIS mobo on sale (limited number in stock). This model mobo is a few years old. When it first came out, it was a tad over $200.00 USD. CompUSA had it on sale for $99. This is a full size ATX mobo, very similar to my current GigaByte board.

I needed a mobo with all the ATX features that my GigaByte board has. Specifically, I needed two EIDE channels, 4 DIMM sockets, at least 2 SATA channels, a floppy controller, and a parport for my old printer. This new ASUS board had all that and more. It’s an SLI board, so if I ever want to run SLI, I can. It has a somewhat better Nvidia chipset than my GigaByte board. So, this is going to be a bit of an improvement for me.

A few minutes after clicking that BUY button at CompUSA, I wondered if I had an AMD cpu out in the shop that I could pop in to the old GigaByte board to make a really nice shop system. Well, I went out there and snooped around. While I do have some nice AMD processors out there, I don’t have any socket AM2 processors. Oh well. Then I had another thought (mistake #2)…

In for a penny, etc…

I went to a fav eBay seller whom I’ve dealt with a few times before. He always has some good used stuff for sale cheap. I searched through his eBay store and found an AMD Athlon64 X2 4000+ that came out of his own personal system (so he claims) and is guaranteed to work or money back. He wanted $35 for it. Not bad… you can still get them new for about $75. This guy has 100% feedback at eBay, and I have bought other items from him, as I said, so I’m pretty confident the processor is probably fine.

Being that this X2 (dual core) is an improvement over my current Athlon64 3800+ single core, I decided to buy it with the intention of installing it in the new board above. Since I name my machines based on the microprocessor being the heart of the machine, a change in cpu means a change in name. Hence, ericsbane03 will be renamed ericsshop01 (the new workshop system) with the old GigaByte board and the single core Athlon64 3800+. The new mobo with the Athlon64 X2 4000+ will become ericsbane04 (inside main system).

I’ll put ericsbane04 into the Cooler Master Nvidia tower that I just transferred ericsbane03 into the other day, along with the current drives and other hardware. I’ll put ericsshop01 into my old ericsbane02 beige tower that’s out in the shop right now. Clear as mud, huh? Is anyone really going to read all this carp I’m typing? Probably not. It’ll be archived here for my later perusing, though.

So, for a total of $146.00 (that I CANNOT afford), I’ll get two systems out of this deal; and best of all, I’ll get to have my vid card working again on my main system. I’ll be able to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R. again! YAY! Besides that, 14K fps is so much nicer than 2900 fps.

OK, so I might not be able to eat this next couple weeks, but what the hell… I need to lost that last 10 lbs, anyway.

… in with, well… nothing, actually. I spent the day today out in my shop weeding through boat anchor computers trying to put one good one together.

Nothing panned out, unfortunately. I ended up stripping an old Pentium III Compaq, an old Duron HP unit, and my old ericsbane02 machine. Each one had different problems but incompatible parts, so I couldn’t cannibalize to make one working unit. I kept the case and mobo from ericsbane02, but the other cases and mobos went to the curbside, where they were promptly scarfed up by the neighborhood scrap metal vultures.

My whole project aim was just to put together one machine to use as a shop system. I was focusing on ericsbane02, an AMD Athlon XP 2600+ based unit, because it was the most modern out there. Sadly, I think there is a mobo issue with that unit. I could have sworn it was working when I put it out there, but I have since taken most of the goodies out of that case. The replacement stuff I put in there today may have actually caused more issues.

It’s a project to return to another day.

At least I did make some room on the shelves by getting rid of those old dinosaurs that I had sitting there. Sheeeesh! One actually had a 10Gig hard drive. I remember paying $100 for that drive to upgrade my Pentium I machine back in 2000. A hundred bucks for 10 stinkin’ gig, huh? We’ve made some hardware progress since then, thankfully.